DESCRIPTION

Besides the obvious pod conversions, pod2man also takes care of func(), func(n), and simple variable references like $foo or @bar so you don't have to use code escapes for them; complex expressions like $fred{'stuff'} will still need to be escaped, though. Other nagging little roffish things that it catches include translating the minus in something like foo-bar, making a long dash--like this--into a real em dash, fixing up "paired quotes", putting a little space after the parens in something like func(), making C++ and PI look right, making double underbars have a little tiny space between them, making ALLCAPS a teeny bit smaller in troff(1), and escaping backslashes so you don't have to.

OPTIONS

center

Set the centered header to a specific string. The default is "User Contributed Perl Documentation", unless the --official flag is given, in which case the default is "Perl Programmers Reference Guide".

date

Set the left-hand footer string to this value. By default, the modification date of the input file will be used.

fixed

The fixed font to use for code refs. Defaults to CW.

official

Set the default header to indicate that this page is of the standard release in case --center is not given.

release

Set the centered footer. By default, this is the current perl release.

section

Set the section for the .TH macro. The standard conventions on sections are to use 1 for user commands, 2 for system calls, 3 for functions, 4 for devices, 5 for file formats, 6 for games, 7 for miscellaneous information, and 8 for administrator commands. This works best if you put your Perl man pages in a separate tree, like /usr/local/perl/man/. By default, section 1 will be used unless the file ends in .pm in which case section 3 will be selected.

lax

Don't complain when required sections aren't present.

Anatomy of a Proper Man Page

For those not sure of the proper layout of a man page, here's an example of the skeleton of a proper man page. Head of the major headers should be setout as a =head1 directive, and are historically written in the rather startling ALL UPPER CASE format, although this is not mandatory. Minor headers may be included using =head2, and are typically in mixed case.

NAME

Mandatory section; should be a comma-separated list of programs or functions documented by this podpage, such as:

foo, bar - programs to do something

SYNOPSIS

A short usage summary for programs and functions, which may someday be deemed mandatory.

DESCRIPTION

Long drawn out discussion of the program. It's a good idea to break this up into subsections using the =head2 directives, like

=head2 A Sample Subection
=head2 Yet Another Sample Subection

OPTIONS

Some people make this separate from the description.

RETURN VALUE

What the program or function returns if successful.

ERRORS

Exceptions, return codes, exit stati, and errno settings.

EXAMPLES

Give some example uses of the program.

ENVIRONMENT

Envariables this program might care about.

FILES

All files used by the program. You should probably use the F<> for these.

SEE ALSO

Other man pages to check out, like man(1), man(7), makewhatis(8), or catman(8).

NOTES

Miscellaneous commentary.

CAVEATS

Things to take special care with; sometimes called WARNINGS.

DIAGNOSTICS

All possible messages the program can print out--and what they mean.

BUGS

Things that are broken or just don't work quite right.

RESTRICTIONS

Bugs you don't plan to fix :-)

AUTHOR

Who wrote it (or AUTHORS if multiple).

HISTORY

Programs derived from other sources sometimes have this, or you might keep a modification log here.

(W) You specified a pod directive that isn't in the known list of =head1, =head2, =item, =over, =back, or =cut.

NOTES

If you would like to print out a lot of man page continuously, you probably want to set the C and D registers to set contiguous page numbering and even/odd paging, at least on some versions of man(7). Settting the F register will get you some additional experimental indexing:

troff -man -rC1 -rD1 -rF1 perl.1 perldata.1 perlsyn.1 ...

The indexing merely outputs messages via .tm for each major page, section, subsection, item, and any X<> directives.

RESTRICTIONS

None at this time.

BUGS

The =over and =back directives don't really work right. They take absolute positions instead of offsets, don't nest well, and making people count is suboptimal in any event.

AUTHORS

Original prototype by Larry Wall, but so massively hacked over by Tom Christiansen such that Larry probably doesn't recognize it anymore.

Module Install Instructions

To install , simply copy and paste either of the commands in to your terminal